Scene: At a family dinner with extended relatives. Foucault (F) and Deleuze (D) are a gay couple and the parents of two adopted children, Fanon (Fan) and Spivak (S). Spivak is Foucault’s daughter from a previous relationship, and she has kept this knowledge from him.

Foucault and Deleuze are proprietors of this unconventional family, one that breaks down notions of family, couples, and children. They are attempting to reach a BwO. They are unaware of their self-privileging and obvious contradiction of the subject/power dynamic.

Fanon, as the Black Adopted Son, is “the Colonized,” who are represented only in terms of the Western world. The inferiority complex of the colonized that Fanon writes about is reflected in the character’s actions and muffled speech (critique on language).

Spivak in the role of the adopted daughter is the subaltern who cannot speak (or isn’t heard). Epistemic violence manifests itself physically in her actions, and in her character’s knowledge of her relation to Foucault.

Everyone sits at one long table. Foucault and Deleuze sit at the center, Fanon and Spivak are at either ends (representing the “center” and the marginalized).

The conversation:

F – Deleuze, I feel that we have embraced ourselves and our role as intellectuals in expressing our sexuality and by having two adopted children whom we have seamlessly woven into our family fabric.

D – Indeed, we have used our intellectualism and our bodies to obliterate subjectifications. Perhaps the workers’ struggle is beginning to wane. Don’t you agree, kids?

Fanon considers this, and while chewing on his last bite, takes another big bite of a biscuit. As he speaks, his voice is muffled and food is flying out of his mouth

Fan – I don’t believe that the familial process has been smooth at all. Now, I am the adopted Black son of two gay men. Your adoption of me, as a child and sans my consent I might add, has made me into what you see me as; no longer am I what I was. My self-identity is definite but not what you define me as. I may be sitting and speaking at the same table with you, but your conversation is different from mine. The ease with which you’ve identified yourself as gay, parent, and intellectual, masks me as adopted, son, and other. The subject has been reinforced.

Spivak becomes visibly frustrated and angry. She speaks in a loud, violent and aggressive tone.

S – It is just as Fanon says! Your perceived notion that the role of intellectuals is no longer to create Knowledge is inadequate. You say there is no place for representation, speaking for someone, or representation, re-presenting someone, but that is exactly what you are doing! Do you understand? Your discussions have taken us, the marginalized, and kept us there! Even at this very table!

She violently stabs a piece of chicken with a fork.

Spivak – I need to tell you something, for a long time now. Foucault, I am your biological daughter.

Foucault and Deleuze stand up together. From the perspective of the audience, they look much larger than Fanon and Spivak.

F – Fanon, you don’t speak with your mouth full. And Spivak, go to the other room!

S exits, Deleuze addresses the rest of the relatives at dinner.

D – I apologize for her behavior. Her friend committed suicide. It was horrible for her and she’s been going through some tough times.

Just an interesting crisscross that I came across while writing my English paper, one of my sources Hearing the Better Story: Learning and the Aesthetics of Loss and Explusion by Dina Georgis mentioned Spivak and Can the Subaltern Speak? in her article in relation to Life of Pi (which I’m writing my paper on!)

Not quite sure where this is going to end up because I’m still preoccupied with writing this 10 page paper but kinda interested to see where it ends up!

Foucault, Deleuze, Fanon and Spivak are four average high school students having a conversation about their English teacher while walking home from school.

FOU – Ms Smith shouldn’t be giving me this C. I don’t think I deserve the C. It’s just because she doesn’t agree with my analysis and only thinks hers is right.

DEL – She’s not a good teacher, the rest of the class hates her, I asked everybody.

SPI – You can’t speak for the whole class. I dont hate her and I’m pretty sure not everyone hates her.

FOU – Ms Smith just thinks that her answer is always right! And she gives students bad grades if we don’t think the same.

DEL – We should all go to the principal and say something!

FOU – Yeah!

SPI – You guys don’t even come to class half the time, you’re not even a part of the class, all you guys do is hang out and cut class with the popular kids! You don’t know what everyone else in the class is thinking.

DEL – Just because the cool kids like us –

FOU – …doesn’t mean you have to get pissed about it.

FAN – Cut it out guys. But you’re both right. Ms Smith shouldn’t be forcing her knowledge and her opinions on everyone.

FOU – See? See, Spivak?! He agrees with us!

FAN – But…on the other hand, I think Ms Smith is trying to have intellectually and academically correct answers. She cares so much about how she speaks and how she’s coming across as an individual, as a teacher, as someone’s who’s educated. She’s just a single, black woman just trying to work hard and live a decent life.

DEL – I guess so..but Ms Smith should probably ease up on us. She needs to hear us out. She needs to at least attempt to understand us as students.

FOU – Yeah, our opinions matter too.

SPI – Your opinions probably don’t matter as much as the entire class because they actually come to class! You both don’t know how the class is feeling about Ms Smith and you’re not listening to me!

DEL – I still think we should talk to the principal, rally up some kids and complain about her.

FAN – I don’t think that’s necessary. Maybe you should talk to her about yourself and ask about extra credit.

SPI – The class asked for it already when you all weren’t in class. When our class spoke up about her Scarlett Letter test and how hard it was, they were all really trying to make a point. But she really didn’t want to listen to us and didn’t give us any opportunity for extra credit.

FOU – See? We told you she was horrible!

DEL – Who is that waving at us?

Ms Smith is walking towards them, apparently heading home as well and waving.

Foucault, Deleuze, Fanon and Spivak look at each other, embarrassed and run away.

Hello group. We’re supposed to put up at least one of our exam so I figure I’ll put up my most recent one. Looking forward to seeing one of yours here also.

Spivak, Foucault, Fanon, and Zizek at a roundtable discussion on the role of the intellectual in today’s emancipatory struggles

Foucault: I would like to start by addressing the question of why there has been little involvement by the intellectuals with respect to the Occupy Movement. Perhaps the intellectuals of today are wise enough to realize that the masses no longer need to be represented and spoken for. The masses know very well their conditions, and can speak for themselves.

Spivak: It seems to me that you are much too quick to move past the problem of ideological mystification and ideology.

Zizek: Here I would like to interrupt for a second to say that we need a new formulation of how ideology functions today. Ideology in the old Marxist terms is no longer accurate. As my friend Peter Sloterdijk has said, now we have cynicism as a form of ideology. What we have now is a reversal of Marx’s concept of ideology. It is no longer the case that people do not know, but instead they know what they do, and yet they continue to do it.

Spivak: Zizek, maybe the surprising thing here is that some intellectuals have not moved past ideology in the old Marxist conception. They are not cynical, they are mystified. They are not even aware of what they do. Foucault, I find a couple of things problematic with what you said about “the masses” and their ability to speak for themselves. First, when you refer to “the masses” as if they are an undifferentiated mass, you are not acknowledging the international division of labor and the ramifications of the differential positions of the actually heterogeneous masses you speak of.

Fanon: Let’s not forget that it is not just the international division of labor that complicates this notion of “workers struggle.” There is a racialized nature to this division of labor. This is part of the problem of the European discourse on the sovereign subject. It constitutes the subject as white, or now, “the West.”

Foucault: Which was not my intent at all. In fact, my work has been concerned with examining the problematic process of subject-making but in terms of the Occupy Movement, I think that any struggle against power can be a part off the workers struggle.

Spivak: Going back to what you (Foucault) said about the masses being able to speak for themselves. In some cases, this is true, as in the case of the Occupy Movement in the West, but it is important to note that there are those not able to speak—the subaltern, like the illiterate peasantry, and the urban subproletariat, for example. It is not the role of the intellectual to speak for the subaltern, as this only serves to perpetuate their position as a subaltern.

Fanon: Precisely. Spivak and Foucault, you both spoke about epistemic violence. I think it would be useful to use this concept to lay bare the conditions that make the subaltern unable to speak. Many intellectuals have been complicit in the deployment of epistemic violence. Every time an intellectual pushes non-Western episteme to the margins, or even worse, deny it as a form of knowledge at all, they commit epistemic violence.

Spivak: Yes, and this is precisely why the subaltern cannot speak. The structures of our episteme as shaped by the academic discourse and the global capitalist order make it so that they cannot be heard. Going back to what I said about ideology, Foucault’s erasure of the subaltern through his disavowal of the realities of the global capitalism, post-colonial issues, and race is a manifestation of the ideology of liberalism.

Foucault: Okay, there are perhaps some blind spots in my work that I should own up to.

Fanon: It’s not all bad. Don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate the fact that you have made a move against representation. It’s just that you have to be careful not to do an erasure of those that have been, for so long, represented.

In the article, Spivak discusses the way in which the subaltern (the oppressed group, the group that’s usually separated from the socially accepted group) has no power over knowledge – or as discussed in class, the Knowledge with a capital K. The way in which the dominant group in society eliminates the subaltern’s knowledge and authority is through epistemic violence, which doesn’t mean physical violence – more along the lines of a forcing of ideas, a mental attack. The dominant group uses epistemic knowledge and says that other forms of knowledge that deviate from their own are insufficient and inadequate. Other ideas – besides their own – should not be accepted as the norm, which is essentially what hegemony is.

So obviously I think that Spivak’s title which is in the form of a question, is a rhetoric one. The subaltern can’t speak. The dominant group speaks for them.